Cultivating leadership

Most CPAs promoted to leadership positions get there because of their
technical skills and professional prowess. In many cases, however, the
same CPAs have not been prepared to act as leaders. The following
steps show what employers can do to cultivate leadership skills.

Emphasize business acumen, curiosity, and strategic sensibility
early in CPAs’ careers and when making promotions.
Ask promotion candidates about their clients’ business issues and
strategy and the forces affecting their clients’ industries. Query
young CPAs about business and economic issues beyond the confines of
the SEC and FASB. Test their curiosity about the state of the firm or
company. When given a choice between two promotion candidates of equal
technical competence, choose the broader and more curious one. When an
organization’s senior professionals possess even a little bit more
business acumen and curiosity, the quality of leadership increases dramatically.

Embrace the nuance of leadership decisions and resist the urge
to oversimplify. When an organization’s leaders
package arguments to senior professionals and “spin” the right answer,
it insults those professionals’ intelligence and discourages them from
asking questions. Over time, this dumbs them down. Decisions get
messier and more uncertain the higher up in the organization you go.
Expect senior professionals to understand and accept these complex trade-offs.

Establish a culture that encourages debate in the
decision-making process. It can be time-consuming
and painful to talk through alternatives, but the process can produce
at least two major positives. First, the quality of the solution
improves because the alternatives are thoroughly tested. Second,
support for the decision can grow even among some who backed another
course of action, because virtually everyone will understand what’s
being done and why.

Include newer, emerging leaders on internal task forces and
give them a substantial job to do. Most
organizations go to the same sure and experienced hands to work on
internal projects because leaders know this is the best way to get the
job done efficiently. Leaders often fear that a wider range of
experience will slow the process and result in the team going down
blind alleys. The better long-term play, however, is to provide
experience that develops the organization’s future leaders. Internal
projects allow newer, emerging leaders to learn more about the
business of the business, try out skills, and build relationships and
credibility that will serve them—and the organization—well in the
future.

Make some leadership roles rotational. In
addition to providing “more slots” into which emerging leaders can be
placed, rotational leadership encourages institutional strength
(because things carry on while the leadership changes) and the
cultivation of successors. Most leaders who know they will be handing
over the reins in a couple of years take the development of the people
who will succeed them very seriously. After all, they will either own
the result (because they moved up) or report to their successor (if
they rotate back to the line).

Lead from the front, but not too far out in
front. Role models who challenge the status quo push the
organization forward and encourage senior professionals to participate
by leading themselves in the direction the organization wants them to
go. The greater challenge, though, is calibrating how far the
organization can step forward at any given time. Pull too hard and the
ambivalent will lag behind, opening a gap between the leader’s ardent
supporters and the rest of the organization. Professionals move best
when they move together, but both words are important: move and together.

—By David Kuhlman (dkuhlman@axiomcp.com), a partner at Axiom Consulting Partners and author of
Leading Firms: How Great Professional Service Firms Succeed & How
Your Firm Can Too.